


On a Kite of Herons

by kitchendance (orphan_account)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Afterlife, Character Study, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24782086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/kitchendance
Summary: “Do you really have to go?” It’s the first thing Gladiolus says, throughout the time they’ve been on the train. His throat dry, voice thin. He lets himself have this drop of selfishness, holding back wants – everything – the tiny, tiny pieces of longing he has kept over the years by Noctis’ side, folded up small and hidden in a bottle full of paper stars that he can’t afford to break.So he takes one, worn and crumpled, yellowed at the edges. It’s the last wish he’ll be allowed to. “Can’t I go with you?”
Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia/Noctis Lucis Caelum
Kudos: 17





	On a Kite of Herons

**Author's Note:**

> It's tanabata today so I thought it'd be the perfect time to post this piece from our 2018 Glandnoct Fanbook! The unedited version!! Without [choranch's](https://twitter.com/choranch827) illustrations!!! 
> 
> and thus immediately, this story loses about 80% of its enjoyment factor

Gladiolus doesn’t know how to respond, looks at the space between their knees, to the polished parquet of the train flooring. His thumbs tremble, over clasped fingers resting atop his knees.

“It’s kind of relieving. If I knew this was how it felt, I would’ve hesitated a lot less.”

The view outside the window on his right, away from where he couldn’t bring himself to look up at Noctis, is a sea of stars and constellations. He could see the train tracks curving right above the Northern Cross, a steady cloud of smoke from the locomotive a little further down, thinning by the time it reaches their cart. He starts to wonder, in the reprieve this lull gives them, if there was anything at all that they could have done differently. Away from those years where they couldn’t let themselves grieve, resigned to a fate they never thought to question, faced with the end of the world.

It wouldn’t have mattered now. So he stops himself. He doesn’t think it’s his place to ask, anyway.

“I’ll gladly let my body burn over a hundred times over.”

Noctis looks at him, rare in a way that he can’t quite read. It hurts, almost, to see him like this – to breathe, like he didn’t have the right to, not when he couldn’t see the rise and fall of Noctis’ chest. He’s eerily still, eyes unwavering as he holds Gladiolus’ gaze. There’s no pulse knocking against the skin on the inside of Noctis’ wrist, yet Gladiolus hears his own, too-loud and thrumming in his ears.

“I’m not going to lie, though. I still have a lot of regrets.”

He smiles, serene, eyes closed and head tilted to one side. A single red spark blooms into the sky outside as he laces his fingers together, light from the fireworks streaming through the window and traces the tips of his hair, tinting his skin warm.

“No use thinking about that now, though. It’ll all go away soon.”

A selfish part of him had hoped, for Noctis to cling on to those regrets a little more. Perhaps that way, they might have been able to stay longer. Maybe, there could even have been a chance that Noctis wouldn’t have to _―_

_Gladiolus doesn’t want him to―_

He couldn’t do that to him, though. Not when Noctis has had already gone through a lifetime carrying the world’s hopes and wishes. Noctis deserves to finally find peace, weightless as he explores the possibilities of the dreams he never let himself have.

‘ _Shortly we will arrive at the Northern Cross Station – Northern Cross Station―’_

“I guess this is my stop, then,” Noctis says, his voice soft over the announcement.

Gladiolus follows the thud of Noctis’ footsteps down the aisle, toeing the reflected starlight dusted across the floor. He stops, watches the station lights from behind the window panes, shadows flickering over Noctis’ shoes as the train slows.

“Do you really have to go?” It’s the first thing Gladiolus says, throughout the time they’ve been on the train. His throat dry, voice thin. He lets himself have this drop of selfishness, holding back wants – everything – the tiny, tiny pieces of longing he has kept over the years by Noctis’ side, folded up small and hidden in a bottle full of paper stars that he can’t afford to break.

So he takes one, worn and crumpled, yellowed at the edges. It’s the last wish he’ll be allowed to. “Can’t I go with you?”

If he can’t let himself wish that Noctis would stay, he could at least try to follow.

Noctis’ smile comes with creased brows, a small, tight tug at the corner of his lips as the door slides open behind him. He steps over the gap between the train car and the platform, catching a glimpse of the gardenias lining the side of the tracks, up and over the yellow line, stretching further under the wooden planks and nestled around the ticket gates. Gladiolus watches the way they glow white with the station lights, overgrown leaves curtaining the front tip of Noctis’s shoes with how he turns back to face him again.

“We’ll meet again soon,” is his only reply.

Gladiolus clenches his fists around the fabric of his trousers, creases and folds, rough seams digging into his thigh. “It wouldn’t be the same,” he whispers.

The train door closes. His staggered breath, outwards, through the millimetre distance and further out to where his king disappears behind a flap of a heron’s wings.

It rings quietly, over and over at the back of his head, with each step across the platform he didn’t feel against his heels. Gardenia flowers twine in tangles around his ankles, cutting into his skin as it grounds him – rooted onto the starlight puddle below his feet, a broken projection refracted through the crystalline windows. 

The station jingle is a simple tune of farewells.

“Rest easy, Your Majesty.”

* * *

Daybreak comes, behind parted rain clouds. The sky Noctis had painted blue left behind a trail of the milkyway, tracing the long road back to where they had left the galaxy behind. Gladiolus wakes up, his red-rimmed eyes the only thing he has that was left of him.

He holds his hand up above his head, trembling as he catches stray sunlight from behind the unravelled paper star he holds in his fingers.

‘ _To forever stand by my King as his Shield,’_ running down to the edge, browned with the passing years, a messy scrawl of someone still at a point somewhere behind the start.

Gladiolus knocks his head back against the base of the staircase to the Citadel, lets his arm fall beside him onto the shattered tiles. It’s hard to breathe. He couldn’t move. Years of thoughts unprocessed, strengths he might not actually have, finally wearing his muscles down, settling as a weight over his body. Ignis and Prompto are just a hair’s breadth away, from the ends of his fingertips. They’re breathing – steady, blurred outlines of their chests rising and falling. Gladiolus hopes that they’re dreaming, too.

He sighs at the sight of his faded eagle feathers, an almost unfamiliar patch of skin peeking over the hem of his sleeves, scars tearing across the ink. The whole thing is a little less than a stain over his heart now, he thinks. A shadow stretching along his forearm, following the lines of his veins, caging the pulse drumming on the inside of his wrists.

* * *

“Gladdy, did you gain weight?” Iris asks, back straight, her fists clenched on her knees.

Gladiolus isn’t used to this – seeing battle scars clear on her face, subtle, sharpened lines he couldn’t have seen without the sunlight. He looks down to the white blanket on his lap, and sets his book aside. A vase of poppies sits by the open window on the bedside table across him. “Is that really the first question you ask your injured brother?”

He’s not quite avoiding her, but he picks at the frayed strands on the bandages around his hand.

“I didn’t realise my brother came back a high school girl.” Her eyes doesn’t soften, despite the fondness in her voice, a huff of laughter that threatens to spill out.

“I don’t think twenty one grams would make the Demon Slayer struggle to carry an old man.”

Iris drops her gaze, to follow Gladiolus’ fingers skitter over the cover of his book. He picked up _The Theory of Weighing Human Souls_ from the hospital library earlier this morning. Science fiction wasn’t really a genre he had explored before, but the nurse who had pushed his wheelchair was really insistent on her recommendation.

“He might’ve carried more souls than his own,” she says, perhaps, more to herself.

It’s a fitting read, if a very difficult one. He struggles to breathe, sometimes, going through a sentence – he hides it well enough, behind a weary smile and a nervous scratch on the back of his neck. A part of him feels like he can’t continue – it’s too – _he wants_ _―_

“Besides,” Iris finally relaxes, deflates with a sigh to rest her forehead on the edge of his bed. She mutters into the mattress, muffled, “You’re nowhere near the age to start calling yourself an old man.”

They stay quiet, Gladiolus watching the clouds through the sheer curtains, idly twinning curls of Iris’ hair around his finger. Her hair a little dry, down past her chin at an awkward length, long overdue for a trim. She must be tired, too. All of them are. Gladiolus just hates that she’s lot better at hiding it than most.

He swallows the urge to grit his teeth, closes his eyes as he breathes with the fluttering pages of the calendar on the wall.

“Cor’s coming over later,” Iris says after a long stretch of silence. Her eyes are red, he notices, when she peeks over her arms, yawning. Gladiolus feels a tiny part of his guilt ebb away, when he finds that the crumpled sheets under her are dry. He hadn’t made her cry. That’s one thing he could do right, at least.

Gladiolus only hopes, for how short it was, Iris had at least slept well.

“You ought to thank him. He felt like he had to bear that weight, too.”

* * *

The evening duty nurse comes into his ward with a lantern in her hand, Cor following not far behind. Gladiolus tears his gaze from the window, and red – in the form of a bouquet of poppies – fills his line of sight, Cor standing by his bedside.

“So you’re the one that keeps bringing them over,” Gladiolus says, a lopsided grin. “Didn’t think you as the type, Marshal.”

“They’re customary to honour fallen soldiers.” Cor turns away, to set the bouquet aside, next to the vase already on the table.

Gladiolus purses his lips, goes back to count the stars outside. He wonders which of them contains Noctis’ memories, how far he has travelled across the sky by now, if parts of him are already scattered out into the night. “Do you mean me?” Gladiolus tries, testing his boundaries.

“You know very well who I mean.” Cor keeps his head down, at the pool of red under his fingertips. “You’ve not proven yourself useless yet.”

“Huh, sometimes I wonder about that,” Gladiolus snorts.

“Here.” A weight settles on his lap, pulling him down to see a familiar black telescope nestled on his blankets. Gladiolus whips his head to where Cor lingers, the pad of his skin a hair’s breadth away from the tube. “I haven’t gone through all of the citadel yet, but I happened to stumble onto this in His Majesty’s old quarters. Thought you’d want it to keep you company.”

He imagines it covered in dust, left next to Noctis’ bed facing the window showered in the moonlight – as it always been – waiting for someone to find it. For some reason, thought finds him with droplets of water pattering onto the back of his hand.

“Thank you,” Gladiolus manages, under choked air, and then again, “ _Thank you.”_

It’s nowhere close to what he wants to say, but for now, it’s enough.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Gladiolus says to his feet, past the edge of the small box Ignis holds, an ornate golden woundwort brooch cushioned in the middle.

“May I ask why?” He doesn’t seem at all surprised – all things considered – calmly putting the box away and into his pocket as if he expected the answer from the start. “I support your decisions, of course. But none would be more fitting to head the new people’s defence.”

“Heh. My sister would have a few things to say about that. Personal recommendation, by the way.” He shrugs, sliding his hands into his pockets.

Dustlight from the glass ceiling, motes floating, the door that leads to the throne room closed tight. Gladiolus stops for a moment, at the painting of the old prophecy hung high on the wall. He turns back to face Ignis, and tilts his head, an exasperated smile.

“I guess you could say that I’m already tired of it.”

* * *

“I’m home,” Gladiolus says, taking off his shoes at the foyer. He pats the wall adjacent from the door, chips in the paint at all, and walks in. The thick layer of dust under his feet makes him kind of regret taking his shoes off, but it feels better this way – days he spent away breaking into clouds around every step, sticking between the threads in his socks.

To his surprise, there isn’t much rubble, amidst the musty wooden furniture – just a shower detritus along with the unmistakeable smell of stale air. He can’t see outside his living room. Hidden behind spider web cracks on the glass-panelled door should be the garden, but he doesn’t need to check to know that the bed of anemone flowers Talcott used to water every afternoon aren’t there waiting for him.

The last thing he remembers after turning right down the hall to their old library, was a sunset-lit room, lost in a blur of pages and books. He doesn’t realise that he had closed his eyes, but he finds himself later in the evening, blinking the moonlight away as he sits in the dark with his back against the high shelves.

Gladiolus’ nose, eyes, were red, dust-clotted. Hidden behind his too-long sleeves – a hitched heave of his breath, a small sniffle.

He hadn’t been crying, but he rubs at his face anyway, staining his cheeks red, too.

* * *

“Wouldn’t have pegged you as someone this whimsical.” Iris laces her fingers behind her back as she giggles, a sunshine smile she directs at her brother. It softens, into something closer to quiet fondness, when she kicks her legs out in a quarter turn, coming face to face with a home from her childhood memories. The flower beds weren’t filled with reeve’s spiraea before, but she likes the change. Small white flowers kind of fits them.

“It’s not a bad idea to be, sometimes,” Gladiolus says. “I’m sorry, I know I should’ve asked you first.”

He follows the neat braids in Iris’ hair over her epaulette. The top of her head barely reaches his shoulder, and from here, he could almost see the same wide-eyed awe she always had, under her lashes, where her fringe hangs too long, mouth slightly parted.

When he sees the woundwort brooch fastened to her jacket lapel, he feels his chest nearly burst with pride. He stops himself short from sobbing and blames his running nose on the pollen, instead.

Iris huffs when she looks up, back at him with a close-eyed smile she reserves especially for when her big brother is being silly and dumb and embarrassing. Patting him lightly on his upper arm, she replies, “This is a great idea, Gladdy, really. I don’t think I could look at our house without crying, otherwise.” She clutches his chalk-smeared sleeves, in the same colours as the new signboard by the front door, on the porch – 1st Laevigata District Public Library.

“You’ll do great,” she continues, as if her voice isn’t thick with the same kind of sibling adoration Gladiolus had showered her with earlier. “I’m so proud of you.”

* * *

Somewhere behind him, on the one-burner stove by his desk, his kettle whistles. His room in the attic of the library is small, barely even a kitchenette or a counter space that doesn’t need to be cleared off of scattered papers and stationery first. A single personal bookshelf in the corner, a window beside his bed, a section of the roof he would often sit on right outside.

Gladiolus’ day starts early, when the stars are still out. Puttering around his room preparing breakfast, setting out his work apron over the back of his chair, trying his best to clean up the clutter that will most definitely build up again come evening.

He always waits for the sunrise from the rooftop before he goes. Noctis’ telescope is an ever-present companion, its sights bridging the space Gladiolus can’t hope to cross, towards a point in the distance beyond his limits.

He greets the sun today too, on the morning of his fifth spring after the light had returned.

* * *

“Oh, what business does a council big wig have in my humble library?” Gladiolus whistles at him, peering over the stack of cardboard boxes he’s carrying to flash a teasing smile.

Prompto laughs as he peels himself off the door frame of the librarian’s office. “Literally nothing about you is humble, Gladio.”

“Hey, I’m just here to read to kids and shelve books, nothing in the scale of heading city redevelopment.” He can’t shrug, not without toppling over a bunch of children’s books onto the floor and out into the hall, but the intent was there.

“That’s what I’m here about, actually!” Prompto perks up, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he brings his hands together. Gladiolus laughs – it’s reassuring that some things don’t change, a mannerism he sees often when they were younger seemingly right at home with a Prompto whose shirt is perfectly pressed and hair neatly combed out of his eyes. “Do you have anything at all on early M.E 700s train engines? We managed to salvage some of the cars from then, but all of the blueprints we have in the Citadel are more body and rail structure than the engine proper.”

“Jared was a huge train buff, so we might have some in archives, but wouldn’t be better to ask Cindy?”

“It’s a pretty important project,” Prompto trails off, stippling his fingers, eyes darting up and to his right. “We wanted the new train lines to have this mismatched patchwork look to it. Very aesthetic. Cindy didn’t want to do anything to it that’ll risk it breaking. We wanted to be sure.”

“Huh, sounds post-apocalyptic,” Gladiolus says from outside the office, wobbling away to set stack of boxes down in the hallway by the door.

“Well, it’s not _wrong_ ,” Prompto laughs. “But yeah, if you could help?”

“I’ll look into it. Come by again in a few days and I should have them ready for you.” Gladiolus dusts off his apron as he moves to the pantry in the back room to prepare tea for the both them. “Sorry about this, by the way. I would’ve poured you one earlier, but I only have two buff arms left.”

“You never had more than two in first place. But, oh― You don’t have to, big guy, I shouldn’t stay any longer than I have to.”

“Now a part of the royal council, a greying man doesn’t have time for tea with an old friend. Alas, the commoner life is a lonely one.”

“Hey!” He snorts, when he sees Prompto through the window, pouting and trying to cover his hair with his hands. “Over the line! I never mentioned your grey hairs!”

“I’ve been greying since I was fifteen,” Gladiolus says easily. “Noct drove me up the wall.” He pauses from pouring the tea to watch a stray drop ripple and disappear, then adds, “Oh, bring Iggy with you the next time you visit, alright? My students’ parents brought me booze and pastries the other day and I think he might be greying faster than the both of us.”

* * *

He feels like he’s standing at the start of the universe, pebbles between his toes and water sluicing around his ankles. The reflection of the night sky breaks under the beats of a light drizzle on the night of Gladiolus’ fifty-third summer, ripples expanding, overlapping, covering the surface of the lake.

This area is completely unfamiliar to him – west of the crown city, somewhere he never quite had any business to visit. The multi-coloured paper lanterns strewn between the surrounding trees is a sight he kind of regrets not seeing earlier in his life, because this is maybe – _definitely_ the kind of thing Noctis would have loved to―

_He could have―_

Gladiolus shivers, as the cold starts to seep through his soaked clothes. Though, even if had he known that it was going to rain, he probably still wouldn’t have thought to run back and grab his raincoat after hurrying down the stairwell and out where his parks his bike.

Somehow, he felt like he really needed to see the stars tonight.

* * *

Crouched down by the riverbank, just outside the city borders, Gladiolus stares, through the gaps between his trembling fingers, at the pencil he accidentally dropped. A line running down an unfinished sketch of a flowering sweet pea, his leather-bound journal balanced on top of his knees. He tries not to think about how his drawings aren’t as neat as they used to be – smooth, outlined edges steadily replaced by uneven, wobbly lines.

Sighing as he sits back, Gladiolus plops onto the grass while he extends his arm forward. He wont let his frustration show – his expression carefully kept blank – but curling his fingers into a fist finds him with a lot less strength than he needs to ride his bike back home. Maybe he’ll call Iris or Talcott later to come pick him up.

Might as well just enjoy the view, for now. Come into terms with the fact that he’s probably getting way too old for random impromptu solo excursions.

River-side meditation is something old people do, right? Wise sages and masters of their craft, the brilliant hermits from Noctis’ old manga do at least, from what he could recall, anyway. Gladiolus considers, for all but three seconds, if he should sport a beard and sunglasses, before struggling to stifle a giggle.

Letting himself fall onto his back, he calms down at the sight of his bike parked on the main road above him. Calling Talcott might be a better bet, now that he thinks about it, since he still has his pick-up truck. With the amount of books Gladiolus had procured this time – filling his bike’s saddlebag to the point that he had to forcibly pull it closed by twining rope over and around it – it might be smarter to just tow it home, rather than begging to ride pillion.

The sweet pea he was sketching earlier caught his eye due to its interesting colouring. Mutation from the long night, if he had to guess. He had read something about it before, in one of Professor Yeager’s more recent papers – that new varieties of common flora and fauna have emerged due to the prolonged change in light conditions. While he doesn’t claim to be an expert, he has enough of an interest to document them himself for personal references. It slowly became a habit, a new way to pass his time, to carry a journal with him in case he comes across anything unusual.

The risk of his hands of feet giving out while on the road feels all too real, suddenly. Through a shuddered exhale, Gladiolus thinks himself lucky, that this little fella had stopped him for a short break.

He softly pats the petals, just in his reach at the tip of his fingers, and then searches his pocket for his phone.

* * *

“You’ve been keeping the place clean,” Gladiolus says, from the middle of Noctis’ old apartment living room. He eyes the open balcony, then at Ignis behind the kitchen counter, cradling a vase of evening primroses to his chest.

The room is otherwise quiet, distant murmurs from the festival preparations outside comes with lantern lights drifting into the dimly lit room. Stray dots reflecting off the wooden floor, catches at the base of the vase as Ignis sets it down by the small window above the sink.

“I haven’t sorted through his belongings until now, though,” he sighs. “I wanted to be able to visit him for a while longer – as Noctis, the boy, and not as King Noctis Lucis Caelum XIV.”

“What made you decide to do it now?”

Ignis brushes his hand along the counter top as he walks around it to the dinner table across the room. His footsteps are as sure as they’ve always been – purposeful, calculated, though slower than they used to be, missing the brisk urgency of a regent steadfast on rebuilding a kingdom his liege had left in his care.

He stops, two steps away, and starts feeling around for something. His expression softens as his fingers find what he was looking for.

Gladiolus almost wants to look away, to the half-open door to Noctis’ old bedroom, when Ignis holds out Noctis’ planisphere in the space between them.

“It’s about time, I suppose.” Ignis’ forlorn smile is directed at the sun hanging low in the sky, thumbs idly toying over the raised glass stars embedded on the surface. “Moreover, I sensed that you might need this soon enough.”

* * *

He doesn’t quite remember when the railways have developed this far. The days where he had poured over blueprints in the royal library, unearthing old city plans for their team of engineers felt harder for him to recall, every time he takes the tram around the square. Those memories feels even further now, with the routes running out of the city, expanding each time he checks the train maps, framed and mounted onto the metro walls.

Gladiolus looks at the small white circles scattered across the map, traces constellations in the lines connecting the stations. He’s waiting for the train that would take him up to the mountains, at the interchange furthest north – a station that was built into the ruins of the old wall. He had a fleeting thought of taking his bike with the sun chasing after him, the way they used to do back then, hours before dawn breaks, breakfast neatly packed but tossed carelessly into the basket on the front. They’d eat just as the sky turns bright blue, by the lake a short trek down the footpath in the woods, round the cliff-side road.

He sighs, when he sees the way his fingers tremble, wrinkles he had long lost count of, veins behind thinned skin a little more visible than they were yesterday.

He tries not to think about the faded lines along his wrist and around his forearm, barely even a shape he could identify any more, now.

It was his fault anyway – for putting this trip off as long as he did.

His laughs is a staggered whisper of breath, small and a little self-loathing, drowned out by the train coming to a stop on the platform behind him. The sound of a music box filters through the speakers – light in tune, its tone bright – a distantly familiar station jingle drifting like a blanket over the muggy summer afternoon air and all throughout the cobblestone building. Gladiolus’ step falters, just a bit, when he turns. Swallowing a moment’s hesitance, he leaves the yellow line behind, taking the step over the gap and into the train car.

* * *

The stations grew quieter, smaller, after each stop. Further up the mountains, concrete structures gradually phasing out into simple wooden platforms by the side of the road. They’ve come to a brief stop, halfway through the line – engines turned off to rest. Gladiolus tilts his head, peeks out the open door from where he sits, at the empty attendant’s booth down a short set of stairs.

There’s usually more to the surroundings, he thinks, off hand, than the low murmur of cicadas hiding in the shade. Food stalls along the wall by the abelia shrubs, passengers trickling out the ticket gates into a stream of lantern lights down main road to town.

He can’t say that he’s surprised, though. Tonight is the start of the Star Festival. Everyone should have already made their way to the crown city to pay their respects to the late king. They have no reason to be here, away from the warm welcoming glow of the festivities.

The same way Gladiolus feels like he has less of a reason to be _there._

The train door closes, over a single street lamp flickering on in the low light. He watches the growing distance, shadows spilling over the lone waiting bench, into a puddle of leaves on the floor, greets the sunset streaming through the windows. He’s the only one left, continuing forward. Maybe the rest of the train is empty, too.

Tracing circles around the scratches under his toe, he remembers the times he had been on this train, years before the fall, when it ran on the electric railway around the shopping centre and the national park. Without the chips in the hardwood benches, or the dents on the overhead racks, it would have been easy to pretend – an afternoon watching flower beds pass by, plastic grocery bags rustling by his hip.

Gladiolus rests his head against the window behind him, and sighs. His hat is knocked over his eyes as he leans back, catching sunlight at the brim. He lets his loafers hang off the tip of his toes, legs loose-limbed and kicked out, the lacquered flooring cold against his heels, despite the warmth on the back of his neck. His hair is at a length he hasn’t had since he was in his thirties, tied low at his nape. Growing grey and brittle now, the strands sticking to his skin.

Out of the corner of his eye, he imagines a tuft of black hair, a ghost of a soft snore behind the wind, by the open window, behind chattering housewives, the train rattling against the tracks. He hears more through the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders, his own heartbeat as metronome.

The illusion breaks, with the sight of the first firework of the night. He follows a smoke trail up the window pane, climbing up in a thin thread from the city and into the sky – away from daydreams and reddened cheeks.

Noctis, his head cushioned on his arms crossed over the back of his seat, disappears with a the burst that follows, red sparks that he couldn’t hear.

So he whistles along with the next one. Barely a wisp of air, almost too soft for him to hear. A long, steady breath upwards the path it takes to the stars.

* * *

‘ _Shortly we will arrive at the final station – the final station. This train will terminate at this stop.’_

Gladiolus struggles to keep himself awake. His feet feels heavier than they should, trembling with the weight of his breath, a pulse he could still feel. It’s weird. He doesn’t think it would be this hard. The gentians coiling around his ankles should have been gone by now.

‘ _I think my heart might be slowing my legs down,'_ he remembers saying, before.

‘ _Fight through it,’_ Noctis had said. Gladiolus chuckles, along with the memory, miming his smile on his own lips. He had sounded fond, oddly calm. Some time in those ten years apart, Noctis had started showing expressions Gladiolus couldn’t really understand. There’s a tiny lilt in his voice that he picks up, tight, practised, for how airy Gladiolus remembers it to be. _‘I can’t do this without you.’_

It worries him, that he hasn’t come the slightest bit closer to, either.

“Just a little longer, I guess,” he whispers to himself as he reaches for the planisphere in his satchel. ‘ _Though I woudn’t know how to ask him about it.’_

He ignores the brush of a cold glass surface against his knuckles. Those wouldn’t matter any more soon. It just felt right to take with him. Even after all of this, Gladiolus still couldn’t find it in himself to let it break.

He would’ve folded another star in right now, even, if his fingers worked the way they used to. Iris had once offered to do it in his stead, her hands still steady, grip still firm. The kids from the public library did too, at some point, coming into their daily lessons with a bundle of colourful strips of wagara paper.

They all went home with a wish bottle of their own, afterwards – one, two hopeful stars sitting on the bottom of the glass. Meanwhile, Gladiolus’ is already a galaxy close to overflowing, falling stars cascading over the rim, if he had let them.

It wouldn’t have mattered, in the end. It’ll all go away soon. Those little pockets of breathing space, between the tips of the stars and the cork-top ceiling – maybe it’s for the best

‘ _Passengers_ _changing for_ _the_ _Crown_ _City_ _Rapid_ _Line please alight here._ _Th_ _is is_ _the_ _last_ _―_ _’_

The fireworks display arrives at its finale, behind the planisphere he holds up arms’ length. He’s shaking. It’s starting to be a struggle, just to see. The scatter of light behind the universe he holds is blurry, dizzying.

He knows he wouldn’t be see it, not in the bubble of this atmosphere, covered behind bright, bright red sparks – but he looks anyway, for a star he can’t find. A star that burns brighter than anything he could reach under this sky.

The train slows. He sees the glow of the station, ticket gates picking outlines in white, off the window railings, the top of the opposite seats.

Flower petals up his heels, the red scars it leaves, is his final parting gift.

‘ _Thank you, for using the Lucis Railways service today.’_

* * *

“You look a lot younger than I thought you’d be.”

It’s gardenias this time, blooming behind him in the next tracks over. Gladiolus brings his planisphere down, fidgets with the strap of his satchel. There’s a stutter in his breath, when he feels the bumps along the yellow line on the platform under his soles. He thinks he sees a flicker of white, somewhere, a heron’s feather falling past his shoulder.

“I could say the same for you.” 

“Makes me feel bad that I’d have to ask for your name, now.” His grin is cheeky, crinkles on the outside corner of his eyes. Gladiolus instinctively looks down, to search for dirt-dusted scraped knees, a collection of bandages.

This Noctis belongs in a memory under a mosaic shade, black hair, cowlicks, frayed edges from a straw hat. He’s not wearing the right pair of canvas shoes, though, different coloured laces catching starlight instead of patches of the sun.

“You’ll forget it again soon, anyway.” The station announcement is almost inaudible, muffled under the train behind him passing by.

“You will too, though,” Noctis says, under the low hum of white noise – a crowd interweaving, leaving through the exits and filing from the entrance down the stairs to wait by the pillars. “Haven’t you heard? Memories disappear into stars, here.”

“ Yeah...” A levelled exhale. Gladiolus tries not to think about water-stained trousers, hem not quite rolled high enough, midnights spent chasing stars. “I know.”

He wonders if the telescope he always has on his balcony is still facing the northern sky.

“ I really am sorry, though,” Noctis mutters to the ground. There’s a furrow in his brows, his fingers clutching tight at the hem on the front of his shirt. The gesture is one he knows well – cats kept in his closet, cookie crumbs on the corner of his lips.

Frustration, most often, Gladiolus recognises – near tears and in front of him, a bruised cheek and a wooden sword on the floor by his feet. He almost feels bad, for the comfort of familiarity he feels, but this Noctis is also one that never had to learn to hide his thoughts behind an abstruse smile.

His body feels lighter, after a soft, slow sigh, a small chuckle that bubbles in-between. It hurts – his chest, his cheeks, warmth around his eyes. He’s shaking, a lot more than he has any reason to, when he reaches out, his fingertips brushing behind Noctis’ ear and up his temple, past his hairline.

This Noctis – Gladiolus realises, finally – never had to be the scorpion. He chances a peek, down to his own arms to find his shoulders bare, under his sleeveless parka. Touching Noctis doesn’t burn his skin, doesn’t leave him with wings that had to carry dreams that weren’t truly his.

He’s warm, and for once, Gladiolus doesn’t need to pretend that they’re both real. Noctis isn’t the light. He doesn’t shine brighter than he ever wanted to be, and that’s fine. Everything’s okay, for the first time after the longest while. The weight of his satchel stops digging into his shoulder as well. He hopes, that the wishes he carries now, are ones that they’ve made for themselves. 

“Don’t apologise,” Gladiolus says, smiling. The strands of Noctis’ hair are soft as they fall through his fingers. Holding him by his shoulders, he brings their foreheads together before he whispers, “I’m happy for you.” 

* * *

“ I’ve been wondering,” Gladiolus asks, hiding the hitch in his breath when his fingers brush against cold light, feeding the ticket into the turnstile gates as he stumbles out. “Aren’t we supposed to head to the Southern Cross by now?”

  
“Hmm, I guess,” Noctis replies, off-hand as he trails into a hum. He stops, a few steps ahead, to tilt his head up and towards at the sky. From where Gladiolus stands, a little behind, at a conscious distance, he could only see an outline of the outside corner of Noctis’ mouth, soft murmurs as he charts the stars. “I just wanted to take a small detour. Felt like I should show you something I found while I was here.”

  
“Besides.” A comet passes through the sky, just as Noctis turns on his heel to face Gladiolus, the light from its tail caught on the tips of his lashes. “That ticket can take you anywhere. I wouldn’t worry.”

“This?” Gladiolus rummages his satchel for his planisphere, holds it up against where Noctis stands, shoulders straight and unwavering. The constellations painted on the surface starts to glow, faintly, under the street lamps by the station entrance.

“Yup!” Noctis laughs. Hand outstretched above his head, he traces an arc across the air before curling his fingers in, mimes catching a star as he twirls on his tiptoes, back towards the footpath off the main road, down the  
stairs. Kicking his feet each step down, he hops between every rung. “That thing got you home, didn’t it?”

Gladiolus hides a chuckle in his palm, scratches at the warm warmth he feels seep into his cheeks. He counts the gravel by his feet for a while, before pulling himself forward by the bag strap across his torso, following Noctis down to where the rows of street lamps stop.

Off-beat, his bag against his thigh, buttons on the flap – magnet long weakened – tapping against each other, Gladiolus starts humming, a tune that doesn’t quite harmonise with Noctis’.

He wouldn’t have thought that walking down winding footpaths, watching Noctis’ hoodie bounce against his back, over an embankment surrounding pools of starlight is his idea of home, but somehow, the two of them together like this, a few astronomical units above the mesosphere doesn’t make him feel lonely.

The summer air greets him like family, as they start to climb over a hill. Wind chimes over the porch window, water dripping from the tap into the sink, a watermelon left to soak. Gladiolus thinks back to nights accompanied by cricket chirps, grass against the back of his knees. They’d go looking for fireflies, by the riverbank behind an old abandoned bus stop.

That Noctis had looked the same, as the one in front of him. Forward facing, the end of his hair, freshly trimmed, hanging shorter than it usually does, just up his nape.

Again, flickering brightly, today fireworks shoot past the galaxy, in a piece of the sky to their right. It’s too far for them to even spare a glance, this far out in their corner of the universe.

“We’re nearly there,” Noctis says, without looking back. Gladiolus follows a stray trickle of a burst fall off tips of his hair, down to dirt-scuffed soles. “It’s just over that hill.”

“Any chance you’re going to tell me what it is? A hint?” Gladiolus teases, his voice light. “Build anticipation?”

“Hmm.” Noctis makes a show of thinking about it, three taps of his forefinger against his chin, then continues, “Nah.”

They’re nearly at the end, a few more steps toeing over shadows blooming across the ground. Noctis turns to Gladiolus, already at the top of the hill. Looking up at him like this, a few paces behind, Noctis with the infinite expanse of space stretching behind his back, reminds him of an old fairytale he used to tell the kids in the library.

A birdcatcher. His gloved hand raised high, pointing towards faraway worlds. At the intersection between planets, he guides migratory birds throughout seasons down to where the sun rises over the horizon.

He gradually begins to long for flight himself, and eventually leaves the border where the light doesn’t touch the tip of his fingernails, on a kite of herons.

Gladiolus arrives at the top, reaches out for Noctis’ hand as he stands next to him. He turns his head back – one last look over his shoulder, at the station lights blinking far, barely visible, a thin web of white threads.

His heart swells. He feels his toes curl in his shoes. After a staccato gaze of his journey, taking in the sights, sceneries he travelled past to bring him here, right below his feet is a meadow full of indigo gladioli.

The grass stains his knees, when he crouches down, sifts through his satchel he for a glass bottle he knows he still―

“Is it what you thought it’d be?” Noctis asks, leaning down next to him.

Gladiolus nods, his eyes squeezed shut. Yellowed at the edges, crumpled and worn with faded ink running down the surface, was the last star sitting on the bottom. For how much his shoulders are quivering, or how hard it is for him to breathe, through the unfolded piece of paper he brings to his lips, he’s smiling.

He’s thoroughly, wholeheartedly relieved, warmth bubbling up his chest to the tip of his ears, down to where his fingers interlace with Noctis’, and he’s smiling.

‘To forever stand by his side,’ is a little different than what he probably had written at first, but that doesn’t matter any more. He doesn’t need to remember. Not now, when all of what they were before had gone, from paper stars into a trail in the milkyway leading to where it all begins.

“You know,” Noctis starts. “I come here a lot, since getting off that train.”

He sits down next to him, runs his fingers down indigo petals, a lone gladiolus flower by his hip. His face softens, a small hum with his even smaller smile. “After a while, I didn’t know what I was waiting for, just that I never felt lonely.” 

“I’d ask you to lend me some of those paper stars but it might be better to  
Just say it.” 

The hand around Gladiolus tightens, the pads of Noctis’ fingers soft in a squeeze. 

“Thank you, for being here.”


End file.
